“There will be no Thanksgiving this week,” announced Matthew gravely when he came home the next day. “Here in Connecticut we cannot have our own holidays anymore. Besides, a terrible thing happened last night. There was a band of sailors from a trading ship. I am sorry to tell you, Katherine, that your friend William Ashby was their only victim. The band put devilish pumpkin lanterns with candles inside them in the window frames of his house that are waiting for the new panes. Luckily, the three band leaders have been captured. I hope they will be severely punished.”

Thursday Lecture day, the day of public punishment, was only two days away. Somehow, Kit already knew whom she would see there. By Thursday noon Kit couldn’t keep her mind on her work. An hour before meeting time, she quietly got out of the house and went to the Meeting House alone. She saw them all at once: there in the stocks were the three Dolphin men, and none of them showed any sign of repentance. Nat and the other sailors were cheerfully exchanging insults with some younger boys standing nearby. Kit came forward so that Nat could see her, but he pretended not to have recognized her. Suddenly, she felt tears running down her face.

“Kit,” Nat finally whispered, “get away from this place! Quick!”

But Kit only stepped closer. “This is horrible, Nat!” she cried out. “I can’t stand to see you like this! Is there anything I can do? Are you hungry?”

“I’m quite comfortable, thank you,” he told her. “You can stop pretending now. Anyway, it was worth it. You should have seen Sir William’s face that evening.”

He was impossible! She turned and walked away. At the door of the Meeting House she stopped to read a notice which said that three sailors would stay in the stocks from one hour before the Lecture till one hour after. They would also pay a fine and would never be allowed to come to Wethersfield again. Kit’s courage evaporated. She simply couldn’t go into that Meeting House and sit there, listening to the Lecture together with her family. She had to talk to someone, and there was only one person who could understand her. Anyway, it’s a good chance to bring Hannah the wool, Kit decided. She briefly stopped by the house to pick the package. The family had already left for the Lecture, and even Mercy didn’t see Kit.

At the Blackbird Pond Kit gave Hannah the wool and told her the whole story. “And now Nat is banned from Wethersfield! He won’t be able to leave the ship or to come to see you anymore!” cried Kit.

“Well, that is a shame,” Hannah agreed with a little sly smile. Kit had to smile, too: why hadn’t she remembered that since eight years old Nat had always somehow found his way to Blackbird Pond? Hannah knew that nothing could keep Nat from coming again. As always, here in this house, all things looked much simpler.

“This William Ashby,” Hannah said thoughtfully. “Is the young man courting you, Kit?”

“Well… Yes, I guess.” Why hadn’t she ever told Hannah about William?

Hannah’s kind eyes studied the girl’s face. “Do you plan to marry him?” she asked gently. “Do you love him?”

“I don’t know. How can I tell, Hannah? He is good, and he likes me. Besides, if I don’t marry him, how shall I ever escape from my uncle’s house?”

“Bless you, child!” said Hannah softly. “But just remember that there will be no escape at all if there is no love.”

There was a knock at the door and in came Prudence. She had brought some news about the three sailors. “Nat won’t be able to come to see you,” she told Hannah. “They took them to the Dolphin. But Nat waved goodbye to me.”

Soon they began their reading lesson. Kit had chosen the Psalms to start with, and slowly Prudence was reading out the lines. Then Kit took out a copybook, a small bottle of ink, and a quill pen. “Now I will teach you to write, Prudence. Watch me.” She opened the copybook and wrote the child’s name on the first line. “Now let’s see if you can copy that.” The girl did and was astonished by her own work. Kit and Hannah exchanged a warm smile, but for the first time Kit felt real fear. “Hannah,” she said softly, “I am afraid to go on like this. What would happen if they found us out?”

Before Hannah answered, Prudence looked up. “Don’t say I can’t come, Kit!” she said. “I don’t care what they do to me. I can stand anything, if only you let me come!”

“Of course you can come,” said Kit, hugging the child. “We’ll find an answer, somehow.”

It was getting dark, and Kit and Prudence had to go home. If only they could live a simple life here, in this cottage, together with the older woman and her cats. Later Kit would remember this idyllic picture many times. Was there some premonition? Did she somehow know that this was the last afternoon the three of them would ever spend together in the small cottage?

* * *

At home Aunt Rachel greeted Kit gravely. “You’re very late, Kit. It was wrong of you to stay away from Lecture. Your uncle was very angry. By the way, John Holbrook is here to say goodbye to you and Mercy.”

“Goodbye? What has happened, Aunt Rachel? Where is John going?” asked Kit, shocked.

“John has enlisted in the militia. They are sent to help some towns in Massachusetts with the Indian attacks, and John volunteered to go with them. They need a doctor, and John has learned a lot of medicine this year.”

“But why now?”

“I think it was his way of breaking with Dr. Bulkeley who favors Governor Andros and the new government,” explained Rachel. “John just couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“That’s not fair!” cried Judith. “I think it’s just his stubbornness!”

Mercy spoke too now, “I think you should be proud of him.”

“Well, I’m not,” answered Judith. “Now John won’t get his own church, and he can never get married or build a house!” Tears were running down her cheeks.

“He will come back,” Rachel comforted her. “It will be only a few weeks.”

Mercy spoke thoughtfully again. “Try to understand, Judith,” she said slowly. “Sometimes it isn’t that a man doesn’t care. Sometimes he has to prove something to himself. I don’t think John wanted to go away. I think, somehow, that he had to.”